Steps
by ReginaVerba
Summary: Jean's life is not going so well. That's why he moves to smaller town to start everything from the start. Jean expected to just stay shut in his house, but he meets his high school friend Sasha and that's how his new life journey begins. [JeanMarco, Springles, ReiBert]
1. 1st Step: How it all started

Okay, so I somehow have to start this. My life never been hard, but some shit happened and I had to spend a few days at psych ward. Well, from the beginning I didn't have any mental diseases, but after my "little" breakdown I was diagnosed with a depression. So they prescribed a lot of medicine and appointed a mandatory therapy. I can't say that it didn't help; it did, but only at that time when I was at the doctor's office. After that I had to face all the problems myself. It was hard… I didn't loose my job, though. But the toughest thing was to see your life crumbling away like some sandcastle in the wind and your, so called, friends leave you. And so little by little I became all alone.

I was still going to the therapy , until my therapist, I think her name was Petra, really sweet girl, suggested me readjusting my life, like changing my job or moving to live somewhere else. I didn't want to look rude or something, so I said that I'll consider that idea. To say the truth at that moment I had no intention of doing it. I worked my ass off to get good position at the job. But… when my last friend decided to leave me and with that making me a total loner and outcast, I just thought fuck it.

I decided to change completely but I didn't even know how. A lot of religions say that if you're unsure or have questions you should ask God, but I'm not religious. But I decided to ask someone who was closest to the God, in my opinion, at that time. My therapist. When I opened the office door Petra was sitting by the window, drinking tea ,I guess, and bathing in the sun. At that exact moment she looked like a true deity.

"Hello, Jean." She stood up and with a graceful gesture offered me to sit down at the sofa. "I'm sorry, but I didn't think that you would show up here again." Petra smiled and took her notebook where she used to write notes about my problems.

"Why is that?" I just now realized how husky my voice is, probably due to my smoking addiction.

"After I offer life changes everyone probably assume that if they come again, I would do that over and over again." That woman is probably every man's dream wife; she has this calming and cute aura around her.

"Soo... I considered this option and decided to change completely, move and perhaps change a job. But I've got no idea how." I was analyzing the office and it didn't remind of other doctors' offices. It gave this "you're welcome here and you'll be welcome in the world" vibe. It was the first time I realized that.

"As for moving I would suggest moving closer to the nature, near not very huge town."

I already knew a town that would fit the description.

"What you like to do at your free time? What is your hobby?"

"I used to love to draw… I actually studied art in college." It sounded like I wouldn't really change my job because I worked at the design industry, but in reality what I did for a living, didn't include art.

"Great then, you can be an artist.' Petra tucked a strand of her short hair behind her ear. "I'm really glad for you Jean. Willingness to change shows that you're getting better. Trust me – you will."

I had no idea how to respond to this so I just squeezed out a little awkward smile.

"But meet me once in a while, okay?"

"…'kay."

* * *

It's been a while since I've driven such long distance myself, alone with my thoughts which were not very optimistic. I chose a town near my hometown. The main reason was that my mom lived there and I absolutely wasn't ready to meet her in this sorry state.

Well I was quite wealthy so I bought a house near lake, a little further away from the town. I had no expectations to get friends so at least I could be an outcast… without being bothered by people. My stuff was already there, I saw the company's, which transferred my things, van drive back. Then my stomach decided to make dying whale's sounds and that meant only one thing… I had to drive to the store which was almost in the middle of the town.

The shop surpassed my expectations, but it was nowhere close to the malls in Shiganshina. They were huge.

"No way! Is that Jean Kirschtein?!" I was holding a pack of frozen pizza when I heard very familiar voice in the distance.

"Uh… Sasha?" I turned around. She was my… really good friend in high school.

"Where have you been?"

Having a vacation at the psych ward would be 100% true, but after my experiences I went with other answer. "Ah… Just working."

"So what brings you to Jinae?" Red haired woman grabbed something from shelf and threw it into already full cart.

"Got tired of the city I guess?" I shrugged; I would never have thought that I would meet her here, especially here.

"So you're going to live here now?" She looked very optimistic and happy, and maybe I need people like that in my life.

"Yeah… You know that house by the lake?" I awkwardly gestured with my hand.

"Oh yes! I've been wondering who bought it and I can't believe it you!" Sasha eagerly clapped her hands.

Yes Sasha me too.

"I really miss talking to you, so you can stop by anytime." I tried to smile. Well if I was my old self I would be lying about that, but surprisingly I wasn't. I got really tired of pretending not to be home.

"Yes of course! I mean we haven't seen each other since when, high school?"

"Y-yeah."

"I suppose you had quit your former job, so if you're gonna search for it we are going to meet often." She grasped the handle of the shopping cart tightly. "So anyway I have to go. See ya around." She turned the cart around and walked away swinging her hips a little.

Okay Jean you're starting a new life here. Keep your optimistic attitude and don't fuck it up.


	2. 2nd Step: Socializing

Trying not to fuck up is easy when you stay shut in your home for all day, but then trying to keep positive attitude is exact opposite. Petra told me that I have to socialize more but that's actually quite a problem. As you already know I have a depression… well with some spice. If I get into really intense situation or something like that I get some serious panic attacks which might lead to another "little" breakdown, and that's why my sedative comes with me anywhere I go. Oh and if the breakdowns repeats I might get locked up in psychiatric for more than a few days. And I absolutely got enough of those delusional freaks.

Apparently I was supposed to change jobs, but the only thing that changed was "working" status, currently I'm "unemployed". Well… I didn't even try to get a job. I just laid around at home. Which I am doing right now; rolled up in blanket observing flames in the fireplace. You know like in that Disney cartoon, where old priest looks at fire, lustfully imagining things and singing. Except that I lost a fight over my voice to cigarettes long ago and secondly I'm a depressed piece of shit, I have no one to lust for.

I've been looking at the fire for more than a half an hour and my eyes became itchy. Great Jean. Now I have to get those god damned eye drops. I always blink and waste half of the bottle.

I crawl out of my blanket burrito. There's shit ton of boxes lying on the floor and I happen to kick one of them. It's full of books my mom sent me and I haven't even opened it. She really likes to read and tries to make me read more. I can't say that I hate to read It's actually the opposite but my mom always sends love novels, probably tries to make me settle down a bit, I mean I understand her; I used to be like Don Jon of this age. And the others are philosophical ones, which always say that your life is shit and you have to change it.

Well actually they say truth about me right now.

I walk to the kitchen where all of my medicine is. Clearly my stomach knows where I am and announces about the hunger. And now I have a reason to get my ass out of the house and drive to the town. And on the way I'm going to get a job. To be more exact I decided to be art freelancer if thing like that exists. Because I can't handle offices anymore. On my way out I grab few scans of my works.

I get into my 1967 Shelby. I look hipster as fuck with it but hey no complaining I really like this car and in addition my dad left it to me. I turn the radio on because my depressive thoughts are starting to really annoy me. As I drive to Jinae I begin to pay attention to the view for the first time. I mean it's useful since I'm going to paint more.

Sasha mentioned that if I'm going to look for a job - we will meet. I suppose that if I'm going to do that I have to go to some bureau. Jinae is a small town and I can see only one fancy building. It's not very huge but you get that office vibe from it. I park my car in front of it and go straight to the reception or whatever it's called.

"How may I help you?" Widely smiling girl with a ponytail greets me. I can clearly see that her hairstyle is very tight and her head hurts.

"Erm…Uh… Does Sasha Blouse work here?" I'm always awkward when I'm talking to receptionists because I perfectly know that those smiles are fake.

"Yes. Who's asking?" Female picks a phone up.

"Jean… Jean Kirschtein." What the fuck Jean?! You're not some fucking James Bond!

"Hello ma'am." Sasha can't be older than the girl by more than two years. "Jean Kirschtein is asking for you. May he come in?" Few seconds later she hangs the phone and smiles widely again. "Office number 305." She indicates the way to the elevator with her hand.

Ah them fancy office lifts, how I miss them. Actually they're the only ones I'm not scared of. I have a huge fear of getting stuck in one.

As I get out of the elevator I see a man coming out of Sasha's office. His skin tone is a few shades darker than me. May be my height. His dark bangs are covering his face so I can't see his face features clearly but I manage to get a glimpse. He has freckles. A lot of them. Furthermore he has this Petra like aura around him but there's also mystery surrounding him. It's been quite a while since someone caught my eye.

I knock but don't wait for that _come in_ line and just barge in.

"You never characterized with patience." Sasha offers me to sit down with a hand gesture but doesn't pick her eyes from her computer screen.

"I thought I've changed since high school." Of course I have changed since then. I had self-confidence, I was happy and now I'm a mess dependent on tranquilizers.

"I don't know about your sex life, but in other things – you haven't." Sasha just loves to tease my Don Jon-ish lifestyle.

"You know nothing Sasha Blouse." I smirk.

"You watch Game of Thrones too?" Sasha turned her head so quickly I thought she would get a whiplash.

"Yeah… Not that bad though."

 _I'm obsessed with it._ Or… I used to be… Still a good show though.

"Nice…" Sasha extends the end of the word. "But I assume you came here to talk about something other than the show, am I right?"

"Absolutely." I answer as I delve in bag searching for the scans. "I don't know if there's a thing as art freelancer." I can see Sasha giggling. "But I can't really handle office jobs right now sooo…" I give her the copies of my paintings I did like hundred years ago .

"Those are amazing Jean." Sasha looks fascinated as she runs down her fingers through the paper analyzing the strokes. "I will make sure you will get a lot of commissions" She prints some papers and gives them to me. "Here fill these."

"By the way who was he?" I ask while obediently fill the papers.

"Who?" My friend tries to raise her eyebrow but instead she furrows them. That's her signature mimic, used to do that a lot in school.

"The one who was at your office before me." I turn the page and sigh; so many useless information to write. "And if you're going to frown like that you will get wrinkles way sooner than your friends, by the way you've got here any?"

"C'mon you know that your roasts hurt as hell." Sasha glares at me, poor man trying to fill obligatory papers. "And yes I have friends, you should meet them." I feel her triumphant look with my occiput.

"Great to know that." Yeah since all my friends left me, that's great news. "So who was he?" I place the pen on the table quite loudly, announcing that I'm done with the paperwork.

"He's Marco, literature teacher at local school."

"I see the legends about small towns like this that everyone knows everyone are actually true." _Well of course you dumbass you spent your childhood in one._

"It is how it is, and you can't change that."

"It was nice meeting you… again?" I stand up.

"Oh you will meet me more since I've got your number and e-mail." I can feel in her tone that it will be soon. "By the way up for a drink tonight?" See? Told you.

"Uh I don't know." I really miss occasional glass of alcohol but while I use antidepressants I can't drink.

"My treat." Well I'm actually interested in what happened when our roads separated. Okay I will come but I won't drink anything but water.

"And wear something more appropriate. Bless you that I'm your friend."

Yeah sweatpants aren't the most proper clothing for job hunting. And yes I've been blessed by having at least one friend. I'm already in the elevator when I get message from Sasha.

 **8pm at Sina, would you mind if I invited my friends?**

I assume that Sina is some bar but I've got no idea where it is. Plus knowing her she has already invited them.

 **It's k I guess.**

When I text I always have to abbreviate at least one word. That always irritated my mom and she used to say "Congratulations Jean you've saved one letter of your time." It didn't make sense but I understood what she wanted to say. She's the one I inherited sarcasm from.

I slam the door of my car. What… The… Hell… Jean? You want to get locked up again? You want to hear that story about naked human like creatures eating humans again? Fuck… I fucked up…. The antidepressants probably kicked in when I was at the office. And knowing Sasha it's no use in hiding, she would drag me out even if I was lurking in the depths of hell. Well better buy more sedative. I started my car. The engine hummed loudly. A lot of my "friends" were trying to convince me to change it into something more economical and environment- friendly. But in my opinion it would be a total mockery of Ford Mustang. I drive out of parking lot and turn towards supermarket. I have a lot of food resources to refill.

One more thing out of my hate list. I detest supermarkets. It's full of screaming kids. And I hate kids too, they're annoying as hell. But I'm actually quite surprised by how many young families are living in Jinae. I imagined it would be full of pensioners.

"Fuck." I happen to curse when I fall because of the box. Its mom's books again. I kick the box along with what's inside. I decided to take a nap and now I'm this close to being late. But it was a good nap. First normal sleep in a long time. I crunch my meds and hit that speed pedal.

Where the fuck is that Sina? Ah there it is, huge neon red letters helps me to arrive sooner.

"I thought you'd never show." Sasha is standing in front of the door in her office suit. It's so obvious that is not comfortable.

"You would have tracked me down and brought here anyways." I sass a little bit. She rolls her eyes and I swear it's the most perfect and artistic eye roll I have ever seen.

"Anyways let's go I want you to meet my friends." Sasha grasps me by my elbow and drags into a bar. I groan. Currently I express my emotions by groaning in different octaves. The only musical thing I can do now with my heavy smoker's voice.

She dragged me near a round spiritualism séance like table. There were three people sitting around it. One of them was ridiculously tall; I mean how his head is still not shooting through the roof. The one next to him, surprisingly, was giggling to something. He wasn't tall but seriously huge; it looked like he was living in a gym. And there was a female who looked like Thumbelina near them. She was shooting ice cold death glares at me while Sasha was pulling me, groaning mess, towards them.

"Hey guys. It's Jean, the one I've told you about." She pushes me into a chair.

Wait she told them about me? Oh God no no no… Now they're staring at me. Fuck fuck fuck! I can feel heat running down from my toe fingers up to my cheeks. I need my sedatives… Great if I drink that in front of them they will thing I'm an addict, which I am.

"Relax." Sasha jokingly punches me in the arm. "Here drink this." She gives me a glass of beer. I'm always thirsty when I panic so I drink it without even realizing that it's alcohol. I feel the heat of alcohol in my veins and I finally understand that saying "Fight fire with fire." I feel a little bit looser and Thumbelina's glares don't look that intimidating.

"This is Reiner." She point's at giggly blonde. He nods. "This is Bertold." Yeah… BertoldTheFriendlyGiant. "And this is Annie." She shoots few more glares at me and sips her drink which I assume is wine.

"Nice to meet you." I squeeze a smile.

"Sooo…" Reiner looks like he will start blackmailing me. "We heard that you and Sasha were really good friends." Thank you God he's not trying to do that. "…With benefits?" You know what I take that back.

"Y-yeah I guess…" I sip my beer. We were teenagers who really wanted to get laid… and eventually became fuck buddies. "And I presume you already know that Sasha has no shame."

"Oh yes.. She told me that she was masturbating when I stopped her for speeding."

"You're a policeman?" I peek at Sasha and, I swear to God, she's just drinking her beer, not even a little bit red. What the hell Sasha?

Reiner nods. "Yeah. Bertold is working near construction and Annie is trying to figure it out."

"I have already figured it out." She mutters under her breath.

"Sure you are." Huge man teases her. We chat like this for more than ten minutes and I get to know them better. So apparently Bertold is not a builder, like I thought, but an engineer. And Annie's got a girlfriend who couldn't make it here today. But then our conversation gets interrupted by a truly divine voice.

"Sorry I'm late." I turn around to see who it is and it's Marco, the guy from Sasha's office.

"And here's our Sleeping Beauty." Reiner greets him. I'm not sure about the sleeping part, because he seems pretty energetic, but Reiner's absolutely right about beauty part. He's got these perfect cheek bones, amber colored eyes which are burning with enthusiasm, total opposite of mine. His dark bangs are covering his eyes a little bit.

"Spent so much time cuddling, you just couldn't help yourself but sleep in?" Sasha squeezed in her comment too.

"Single Sleeping beauty." He sits in front of me. "And I didn't sleep." Which I've been doing a lot these days and still couldn't get rid of those damned dark circles around my eyes. "I've actually been running like my eye's burned out trying to make everything run smooth."

Your voice is running smooth through my ears.

Marco notices me and holds out his hand for a shake. "I'm Marco."

"I kn… Erm.. I'm Jean." I shake it.

"So what you've been up to?" Annie finally stopped talking under her breath.

"I'm glad you asked." Marco smiles. I see that God was really generous to him. "I'm trying to make a school's play."

"What musical you chose this time?" Sasha is swinging in her chair.

"The Sound of Music." Nostalgia strikes me. When I was a brat I had a role in it. I was Friedrich von Trapp and singing that la note was my proudest moment at that time. "And since there's no guy who could pull of Captain's role and ,the teachers here are all old hags, I will have to do it." That's going to be hella young Captain von Trapp.

"And how the preparations are going?"

"Great actually, but I'm not sure what to do with backgrounds. It would be really cool if someone painted."

Sasha punched me again. "Jean is a painter."

"Really? That's great news. I mean… if you could do it."

I wanted to stay in my blanket burrito for another week.

"Of course he can do it." Sasha took her phone out. Marco's face lit up like a light bulb.

"Then can I get your e-mail? I could send you all the details there"

Before I nod or even do something Sasha's already talking. "I sent it to you along with his number."

"Ah thank you."

"That was fast." I'm not used to that kind of speed.

As we got over this business we again fall into nonsense chattering. Mostly when I first meet people I observe their behavior but these people feel completely normal even if there's stranger –me- between them, or… they don't consider me a stranger anymore. Bullshit… I mean I just met them not longer than hour ago, but anything can happen. I went out to socialize and that's a huge miracle considering my state but on the other side I'm stuffed with medicine of happiness.

"Hey Jean, have you been eating well?" I react to my own name.

"Yes." Yes antidepressants are full of carbohydrates, proteins and fat.

"Oh wait I'm sorry I forgot to ask maybe you're vegetarian?" I can feel shit ton of sarcasm in Reiner's voice and I realize I've been roasted for a first time.

"I can smell my soul burning." I answer to sarcasm with sarcasm and everyone falls into a light laugh and then continues to chat. And I feel a little bit tipsier than I am supposed to be.


End file.
